close your dreams, love
by nightofowls
Summary: "The circus arrives one night, and is gone the next." Against his aunt and uncle's orders, Harry sneaks out to the circus one night. What awaits him is beyond even his wildest dreams. —The Night Circus/The Greatest Showman AU


**disclaimer: **i do not own any aspects of J.K. Rowling's _Harry Potter_ franchise.  
**author's note: **i rewatched _The Greatest Showman_, and the music got me. this is what happened. _inspired by_ **_The Night Circus_**_ and_ **_The Greatest Showman_**.  
**summary:** _the circus arrives one night, and is gone the next_. harry disobeys his aunt and uncle's orders one night, and sneaks out to the circus, where magic blends with reality, and love comes in storms. what awaits him is beyond even his wildest dreams.

* * *

**_01\. come one, come all_**

_The noblest art is that of making others happy.  
_**— ****P.T. Barnum**

**.**

**.**

_The circus comes one night. People marvel and gossip at the gilded gates, at the colored lights twirling under the tent canopies and the thousands of flags and balloons adorning its attractions._

_They swear they can hear laughter and music inside, even though the gates are shut._

Harry's stomach rumbles. He has been cooped up in his room without dinner tonight, and though he has secreted away some of his cousin Dudley's snacks, he doesn't bother. He knows hunger intimately.

Usually he reads or writes or draws; his journals and books are dog-eared, worn down over thousands of thumb-throughs, and his fingertips are too often smeared with ink or charcoal. But tonight feels different.

Tonight, the circus is here.

He can see the big tops in the distance, and the candied aroma of confections tickles his nose. It is a night like any other, yet it is not. The striped tents and gilded gates are calling to him, and _oh_, how he yearns to go. He wants to be among the lights, to finally feel free, and let his dreams soar.

It arrived two days prior. Word travels fast. Within moments of their arrival the curious appearance of the high tents had flashed through the town, garnering whispers and rumors, but of course the Dursleys forbade Harry from going, threatening doubled errands and missed meals for another week should he disobey. They thrive off his misery, naturally.

Then it strikes him: _why doesn't he?_ He has pennies and coppers saved up from running errands around town. His uncle and aunt take measures to limit their interactions with him; tonight, they won't bother him.

For one night, and one night only, he can afford to dream.

Harry gathers the worn stocking filled with his earnings, slings on his rucksack, and opens the window. The cold air blasts him head on, sending papers whirring through the room in a maelstrom, and when he looks down he only sees slick tile and Aunt Petunia's rosebushes, far below.

Thank goodness both his parents were brave, he thinks. He hopes.

Hands clammy and heart frenzied, he slings one leg out the sill, then the next, and proceeds to shimmy along the ledge. For a second he freezes, disbelieving. The shadows stretch out in tendrils, lining the yard.

_Can he do this? He can still turn back if it isn't too late_—

Harry's foot suddenly catches, and he tumbles headfirst down the shingles, falling heavily into the bushes below. He lands with a hefty _oomph_, and while the snipped leaves curtain his landing slightly, his breath is still knocked out of his chest with the impact. Thorns scratch at his arms, and he spits out a stray petal. Anxiously, he stills, listening for any indication anyone heard him.

Uncle Vernon's incensed howl filters through the open window above his head: "What in the bloody messes was that?"

"Probably a raccoon, dear," Petunia says absentmindedly. Dudley whines unintelligibly.

Harry sighs in relief, and edges away, sticking to the shadows and avoiding the autumn leaves. Before long, he is striding off down the road, spirits rising with each step, whooping ebulliently into the night—daring is _exhilarating_—as he runs towards the lights afar.

Soon, the arch looms over him, ornate gold and majestic. Atop unfurls a magnificent clock of copper and unnameable metals, its cogs and gears ticking smoothly as it expands in gleaming mosaics of flowers, creatures, and other indistinguishable patterns. Its undulating ribbons stretch at least several feet, a feat of movement and engineering, impossibly magical.

The polished hands read a minute to midnight.

There is a crowd gathering, children and adults alike. Excited chatters run amok, and many stomp their feet in the hardened mud to shake off the cold, their breaths coming out in hot puffs. Ceaselessly, the mechanical clock ticks.

In this small town where little more than bicycle theft occurs, anticipation runs like a wildfire. There are seconds remaining, and Harry can hear people count under their breath.

As much as he scours, Harry cannot find a ticket stand, or box office. Not a soul within.

The clock strikes midnight.

Not a soul is spared from the grandeur. As soon as the hand reaches twelve, a gong seems to ring from within the circus bounds, nowhere and everywhere at once—Harry cannot tell if he imagined it or not. The gates groan, their patterns shifting within themselves like snakes, and finally open.

Inside, everything is larger than life. Surrounding the big top are high peak tents and domes of all shapes and sizes and colors, revealing nothing of their interiors. Overwhelmed, Harry stumbles with the flow of people, most of whom are shuffling into the big top, which, as he nears, is far bigger than he ever imagined a tent could be.

Judging by the looks on everybody's faces, they feel the same.

The interior of the big top seems hundreds of feet in diameter, with rows upon rows of seats, possibly thousands. The lights are dimmed, but somehow he can still see everything.

Something in the air thrums, and Harry knows it is, for lack of a better word, magic. It couldn't possibly be anything else.

People take their seats. As many as there are, in the blink of an eye it feels like they are brimming, even though the crowd outside couldn't possibly have had so many visitors. The closed tent flap, flying whispers, and _something else _in the air make the atmosphere small, warm, even intimate.

Harry finds a seat relatively in the middle, slightly elevated. It feels like if he just reaches an arm out, he can touch the dusty sand of the ring. He cannot help squirming at the edge of his seat, tensed at every joint.

In here, everything feels infinite.

The audience waits for an eternity, or maybe more. Perhaps it is ten, fifteen, twenty minutes. In this space, time and numbers are meaningless. One moment they are settling into worn plastic seats, babbling in exhilaration and breathing in heady gulps of the candied apple aroma.

Next they know, the lights blow out, and everything falls pitch black.

The show is beginning.

Suddenly, the ring is illuminated in brilliant white, and in the center stands a man.

_The Ringmaster_. There he stands, ageless, in a tailcoat of rich blood red, adorned with gold trim fanning out across his front in wings, flares of yellow and orange and fiery red glimmering as he stands motionless, moving of its own volition. His head is bowed, face concealed by his top hat, hands resting atop a staff. It is simple and elegant enough.

The audience is already transfixed.

Until he raises his head.

Harry sucks in a breath when the man's eyes flash. They are a brilliant icy blue, and somehow his face seems to be ever-changing. One second, it is the countenance of a wizened old man with inscrutable wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, with brilliantly white hair and beard.

The next, however, his wrinkles have faded, are mere tricks of light, and his hair is not white but red, a stark red that couldn't possibly be confused with any other color.

Then he is old again, so impossibly old.

Somehow, Harry cannot focus on the man's face. Nobody can. It must just be the night wearing down on them.

They decide he is ageless. He must be. What other reason could there be?

_Magic?_

The mysterious ringmaster speaks, and his voice booms. It is sonorous; while he is not raising his voice, everybody can hear him clear as day.

"_Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages,_" he begins, his eyes skimming over the crowd, raising hairs. "_Perchance you have stumbled across this circus of curiosities tonight. We are humbled, and we thank you._"

The ringmaster's gaze flits over Harry's, then jars to a stop. Instantly, inconspicuous to all but him alone, his eyes narrow, and he glances at Harry again. His eyes widen, in madness or excitement or both.

Their gazes lock, and Harry freezes.

The man's eyes pierce into his soul as his face shifts like a veil in the wind, and yet he keeps speaking like nothing is happening. Harry senses a knowing smile in that icy gaze, though the man's face shows nothing, and flinches.

"_We welcome you to the Circus of the Rising Sun, of the Phoenix. We invite you to marvel at the breathtaking and death-defying, at the extraordinary, at the impossible. We invite you to gasp in wonderment, gaze in awe, and weep with joy._"

Silence falls. The air is abuzz, but the audience is deathly silent. They are spellbound by merely the sound of the man's voice, stirring up memories and feelings within them only they each are privy to. The ringmaster's eyes do not leave Harry's.

"_But most of all,_" he says invitingly, secretively, "_we invite you to dream._"

Slowly, he raises his arms, spread to the heavens above, as if calling upon forces unseen.

"Now, sit back, relax, and enjoy—_and __let the show begin_."

The spotlight fades. Even as the ringmaster fades from view, his electric blue eyes seem to remain long after, staring unblinking at Harry, burned into his mind. Around the tent, the torches blaze to life one by one, eventually meeting in the middle until the entire tent is basked in a dusky golden glow, melding with the shadows. People gasp in delight as the music escalates—was it always playing? when did it start?—and the ring comes to life.

And so it begins.

**...**

_Later, not a single person in the audience will be able to successfully recount all the feats they witnessed this night. Each time they try, they will stop themselves short and wonder how much of it was imagined, and how much was real._

Each new act is but another wondrous addition to a symphony of dreams. As the audience watches, mesmerized by the vividly dazzling costumes and thrilling stunts and performances, they cannot help but wonder what other unnameable possibilities lie beyond these tent walls.

For what they see here is already a trove of tales worth a lifetime.

A family of fire-breathers, dragon-kin, with bejeweled eyes and hair stolen from flame, dart around the arena, their gazes mischievous and suits glistening like sleek opalescent scales. From their fires they forge ornaments of steel and glass, beautiful trinkets they toss to unsuspecting audience members, which don't crack even if dropped. Sometimes they swallow what they make instead.

A pair of contortionist twins—twins? or one girl?—emerge from a single bronze lamp on a pedestal. They wind in and out and around, through impossibly small boxes and glass vases and even emerging from the ringmaster's pockets, their movements impossibly sinuous and serpentine. How they fit, nobody can fathom. It is as if they disappear altogether.

A strapping escapist with a strong jaw and keen eye is suspended in a tank with hungry sharks, eels, and jellyfish and no door, tied in a glass coffin with nails, chained to traps with poisoned swords and electric wires. People swear he will die every time, yet he never does, always emerging unscathed.

A fair, willowy girl with hooded eyes, pointed ears, and wings sprouting from her back dances on horseback, yet they are not completely horses—they seem translucent, like sunlit water, and people can make out black bones shifting beneath their skin; perhaps they are zebras painted well. An astoundingly tall man with bushy facial hair helps her down, but his towering stature makes him an attraction all for himself. People more nature than man, more bird than woman.

Act upon act, the audience is further and further enthralled, drawn into the magic of the circus. Everything they ever thought to dream plays right in front of their eyes, their wildest fantasies here for their eyes only.

They cannot get enough.

From creatures big and small to daring acts of strength and agility, the circus has everything. Wide-eyed, Harry cannot help laugh and gasp along with the others.

Somehow, amidst the chaos and artful tumult that is the circus, where there is more than meets the eye, he feels more at home than ever elsewhere.

Only after what seems like years, when all the performers spill out into the ring at once to snare the audience in one final glorious act, does Harry see him.

Earlier trapeze and tightrope acts proved especially hypnotizing as the crowd watched dancers in glittering bright bodysuits writhe and leap and flip in midair at impossible speeds, without nets. But as the troupe works miracles in the ring, the audience's attention is suddenly drawn to a spot of light falling rapidly down from the very roof.

And there it is: soaring and waltzing, twisting and pirouetting in a flurry of smooth movement, is a young man decked not in the myriad of colors the others don, but in an emerald green bodysuit so dark it is almost black, fizzling into white and nothing across his torso. On his back there spreads a pair of clawed wings. His flaxen hair is so pale it gleams platinum, flying as he flips upside down and hangs from a silk rope in his descent.

The aerialist falls, then swings upwards. Arching backwards, he glides in a perfect circle right above the audience's heads, arms stretched gracefully, like a swan in flight. When people reach up, their fingertips graze his. He happens to raise his head just as he hurtles past, and his eyes meet Harry's.

Harry has seen many people come and go. For an age he has longed for a spark that will help him fill his journal, a muse for any occasion. He has met the lovely and ugly, the kind and the not-so, and all in-between.

But never has he met anyone who makes him feel more than a spark. Never has a soul made him long for _more_, to toss all his works into a whirlwind and start truly _creating._

And yet, when Harry sees the aerialist in that one split second, time slows.

His heart skips a beat. He reaches out, and—

The young man is swooping away. Already he is beginning another ascent, this time towards the center, where he whirls upwards like a storm and stops, suspended for the briefest moment high in midair, and his wings unravel once more, as does a floating labyrinth of silk, around him like a web.

The lights snap out, but he seems to glow all on his own as he flies.

For a moment, he is floating, unanchored, untethered, _spectacular_. _It must be magic_.

It is brilliant.

The crowd holds their breath.

Then the silk cocoons him, snaps back in sentience, and he is once more dancing with utter poise and grace, more spirit than human, trapped in the ghostly elegance of his movements.

The audience eats it up. They applaud and catcall in appreciation, and for a few seconds Harry still feels his heart fraught like he himself is on a tightrope, ever exhilarated by the great unknown.

Some unnameable part of him whispers that that single look they shared, that single moment, was worth more than this outstanding ovation.

As he sits back in appreciation, eyes glued to the aerialist descending and joining the others in the ring, Harry swears he can still feel that sly gaze lingering on him, piercing through his soul.

**...**

People exit the big top in a daze, sated for the night, unable to imagine what else there could _possibly _be in the innumerable surrounding tents. Children clamor, eager for more, and even the surliest of adults is breathless as the crowd splits into families and couples, wandering around the surrounding tents at their own leisure.

_But there is more to the circus than they will ever know, and the decadent performance they have just witnessed is but an ever-tasteful opening act._

**...**

It is almost dawn when Harry trudges back, the sky teasing in rosy oranges and blues. In spite of having spent the entire night away, Harry feels energy coursing through his veins, the adrenaline rush keeping him wide awake.

He sneaks through the back door, making sure to scuff off his mud-caked boots, and hauls his way upstairs. With each passing moment, he sinks closer and closer to reality; by the time he reaches the top landing, tiptoeing past closed doors and guttural snores, his disbelief in the wonder of the night has faded to a bone-tingling ache, and he is tired once more.

It is over. He cannot believe it.

How can he live like this for the rest of his days, he wonders as he slips off his jacket—still chilled from hoarfrost—and settles down into bed, when everything he has ever felt is right in his reach?

His sleep is restless, plagued by unsettling, phantasmagoric dreams and silk-soft caresses, and silver eyes.

**...**

For the next few days Harry is inconsolably lost. Everywhere he goes, everything he does is grey, and the only color he sees is in his dreams, when the music and laughter come to life, and the images of flaxen hair and adamantine scales he cannot rid himself of during the day come to life.

Ever since that night, he has been wandering in a fever dream, and his soul did not return with him.

He has fallen in love with the circus.

The Dursleys do not notice his subdued, distracted demeanor. If they do, they do not care. Or perhaps they are happy, for once, without his disputes and snarky comments. When the ignorant have themselves to believe in, they are blinded to the rest of the world.

Harry hears passing whispers from the townsfolk when lacklusteredly running errands, and each time his heart yearns and aches.

_The circus of dreams came to town one night, and was gone the next. It was as if their childhood fantasies had come to life. Of course it had to have been real_—_couldn't it? But alas, it is gone now._

_What once stood there is now but empty field._

He loses hope. Perhaps he should never have had any for such foolishness in the first place. In a land that reality has forgotten, does anybody truly belong?

**...**

A week passes, and every night Harry still dreams of the circus.

On the seventh day, he wakes to a faint tapping on his window. Through sleep-ridden eyes and the gauzy curtains, he can make out the silhouette of a bird fluttering by the pane. After two beats and a flourish of snow-white feathers, it is gone, swiftly as a breeze.

Perhaps he imagined it.

Yet, as he turns over, Harry hears a rustle of something slipping onto the rug, and sits up. Gleaming in the moonlight, lying innocuously on the ground, is an envelope, sealed and signed and thin.

Curiosity and a burning longing compels him to pick it up. He has never received mail before. Somehow, he knows exactly where it comes from, without even having taken a closer look.

He flips it over, and the light catches the words on the back.

_Mr. H Potter  
The Room in the Attic, Formerly the  
Cupboard Under the Stairs  
4 Privet Drive,  
Little Whinging,  
Surrey_

Careful not to break the wax seal, he tears open the letter. Out falls a card, pinned to a one-way train ticket.

The train ticket is middle-class, already more than Harry has ever known, and at midnight, leading to—well, _Scotland_. Thousands of miles beyond fathomable.

Chest constricting, he turns over the card. It is black with twisting, feathered white outlines and vines, and fits perfectly in his palm. Something about it seems heavy, in spite of its being paper, like it holds a secret.

It only says one thing.

_Come find us._

Perhaps it is impulse. Perhaps it is his urge for the unknown, his desperation for adventure. Perhaps it is simply because he has never received mail before.

Yet, as Harry leaps out of bed and begins bundling his belongings into a ratty suitcase, he has never been so sure of anything in his life. Nothing is holding him here. _The circus_ is out there, waiting.

And so, with barely a penny to his name and a single train ticket, Harry slips out of 4 Privet Drive for the final time, and for once in his life he does not turn to look back. For once in his life, he has something to look forward to.

He runs. He is free.

Little does he know, this is only the beginning.

* * *

**endnote: **please note, some of the tent themes were borrowed from _The Night Circus._ please r&r!


End file.
